Facebook has fixed a bug that gave websites access to information from a users profile without their knowledge Ron Masas a security researcher at Imperva discovered that the social media sites search results werent protecting users from cross-site request forgery CSRF attacks which would allow fraudulent websites to secretly collect profile information This allowed information to cross over domains essentially meaning that if a user visits a particular website an attacker can open Facebook and can collect information about the user and their friends explained Masas Not only could a malicious website open several Facebook search queries in a new tab that would return yes or no responses but it could also gather more complex results including returning all a users friends with a particular name a users posts with certain keywords and even personal demographics The vulnerability exposed the user and their friends interests even if their privacy settings were set so that interests were only visible to the users friends said Masas But Facebook told TechCrunch that the company hasnt seen any abuse We appreciate this researchers report to our bug bounty program said Facebook spokesperson Margarita Zolotova in a statement As the underlying behavior is not specific to Facebook weve made recommendations to browser makers and relevant web standards groups to encourage them to take steps to prevent this type of issue from occurring in other web applications This is the latest breach for Facebook Last year it was revealed that 87 million of its users may have had their data shared with controversial research firm Cambridge Analytica At the same time 126 million Americans accounting for a third of the nations population were exposed to content placed on Facebook by Russian sources during the 2016 elections Then in September the company admitted that roughly 50 million of its users had their data exposed through an attack on its network As a result a recent poll showed that Americans believe Facebook to be the least trustworthy of all the major technology companies as far as protecting user data Facebook is in the bottom in terms of trust in housing your personal data said Harris Poll CEO John Gerzema Facebooks crises continue rolling in the news cycle LATEST INSIGHTS Our data and analytics team has developed a number of creative methodologies and frameworks that measure and benchmark the innovation thats reshaping the payments and commerce ecosystem Check out our latest Digital Fraud Report Related Items data security Facebook fraudulent websites News social media Whats Hot Black Friday looms The holidays loom